The Final Death

I don’t know who wrote the code. I wonder if they are like us, a human species, or if they are something else entirely. Either way, I cannot imagine their purpose in creating this place. I cannot imagine what they hoped to accomplish in sending our minds here.

Everywhere I look, there are other versions of me. A 13-year-old me, a 20-year-old me. We all remember how we died. That is, we remember the death of our physical bodies. The next thing we remember is opening our eyes to this world, wondering how we could still be alive.

Whatever brought us here did not intend us to leave; we cannot die. We cannot cease to be. I know this from some of the others; there is an intact skyscraper at one end of the main sprawl of buildings here, and several of us have tried to end their existence by jumping off of them. They experience a tremendous amount of pain, but the pain fades eventually, and they look at us with haunted eyes, unmarred and defeated.

Several of the twenty-somethings found a way to plant a garden. They were here before me. When they want to expand it, I help them build new greenhouses from the materials the teenagers bring back. The teenagers are ideal for this; they wander relentlessly, picking through collapsed buildings and junkyards, still unsure of who they are.

I don’t know whether anyone else was here before us or if all the man made objects were created with the world to accommodate us. In this area, there are both office buildings and residential homes, scattered haphazardly where the edge of the rocky landscape flattens into the forest. There are ruins scattered throughout the sturdier buildings, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

Every day, new arrivals come through an arch in the center of our community, and every day they are older than those the day before. I know I do not see all that arrive. This world is too vast; we have gathered that from those who journey long distances, stumbling across other communities and trekking far and wide before returning. They tell us there are oceans, deserts, and many other communities. Some do not return. I sometimes wonder where they stayed, or whether they are still traveling, searching for an answer.

I always check to see if the newcomers in my area are wearing the locket. It is secured around my own neck, a tarnished silver heart at the end of a thin chain. When I first opened my eyes here and looked down at my unharmed, full body, I noticed it was still there, resting against my skin. I did not dare open it at that moment to look at what was inside, lest my heart should break, but I have opened it since. The ash was still in there, somehow. I took pains to make sure none escaped before I closed it again.

Today, an eighty-year-old arrived in our community. The twenty-somethings have been shying away from greeting new arrivals for some time now. I think it pains them to see how much more time they could have had. I cannot say that I blame them.

“Welcome,” I said softly. I tried to smile. “I’m sure you have some questions.”

The new arrival looked at me, and her eyes immediately locked on the chain of my necklace. “Astilbe,” she whispered, and my gut jolted. “Is he here?”

I shook my head. “It’s only us. A million different versions of you, all amassed in one place after our lives ended in each of our respective simulations. This is the new simulation we were inserted in.” This was all speculative, of course. After all, no one had come in and told us what this was or what we were doing here, but it seemed pretty obvious to those of us aware of the concept: every time a decision was made in the simulation we existed in, whether it was our own decision or otherwise, the simulation split into two and continued forward in those different directions. This happened infinitely; there were many versions of us with many of the same memories, up to a certain point, and many who shared very little memories at all.

Her mouth fell open slightly. She looked around, noting the other versions of us milling around. She noticed the children; 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds chasing each other around, yelling about the rules of some game they had invented.

She flicked her eyes back to me. Her voice shook as she said, “This is Hell.”

I tried not to grimace. Sometimes the arrivals are insistent that this is a purgatory for a single person awaiting judgement from God, that we will all be combined once we come to peace with all the versions of ourselves. I didn’t particularly want to have that conversation today.

I led her to the gardens, where I felt most comfortable, pointing at buildings along the way and mentioning what was inside each, trying to ignore the pit in my stomach. She was quiet as we walked, raising her eyebrows every so often and nodding to indicate she was listening. I stopped in the shade of the tree at the edge of the first garden, pointing out the tomatoes, the squash, and several of the flowers we had growing there.

“When did you die?” she asked me abruptly.

“I was forty-two,” I replied, startled. “It was a car accident.”

“And was he with you then?”

I frowned, turning my head to the side in confusion. “Astilbe died when he was thirty-five.” I pulled the locket out from under my shirt and rubbed the heart with my thumb. She recognized the locket, I knew. It was a gift from him. “I put a small bit of his ashes in this.”

“Oh my dear, sweet woman.” She shook her head. “You only ever saw the best of him.” She looked back over the garden, eyes distant.

“What do you mean? He didn’t die? With you?”

“No.” Her expression sharpened. She shook her head. “I ripped that locket from my neck a long, long time ago.”

“Please,” I blurted. “Please don’t ruin him for me.”

She didn’t know yet. She couldn’t know how important it was to have one memory to cling to of someone that was still good and pure and untainted by your own thoughts or hindsight.

Because it is everywhere in this world. I look at all the other versions of myself and can see their faults clearly as if from an outsider, but I know they are mine. I listen to all the successful and bright versions of myself and see all of my individual failures. I see the person I could have been if only I had been better, faster, smarter. The love of someone outside of myself, however, is beyond judgement. It is pure. Unflinching. That love is something beyond just me.

But it was too late.

The seed of doubt latched onto me with her pitying look, and I dropped to my knees. She was right. This simulation was hell.

She got onto her knees as well and gripped my shoulder. “I am sorry.” She sounded like it. We were quiet for a moment before she continued. “But I think it will all be over soon.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous, “How could you say that? You have no idea!”

She released my shoulder and gingerly twisted to sit on the ground. “How many years has it been? How many years between you and I?”

I clenched my jaw, but I thought about it. “Maybe ten?”

She nodded. “Time moves more quickly here, then. It won’t be long until the Final Death.”

“The Final Death?”

“Have you thought about what will happen once we only exist here, in this simulation after death? Have you thought about what will happen when we are dead in every dimension we ever lived in?”

“I…”

“I knew about the simulation before I died, just as you did. But I had forty more years to think about it, and research it, than you did. Why do you think anyone would create a simulation that uploaded all the versions of one person and put them together like this?” It was like she was a teacher, asking a question without expecting me to know the answer simply to invoke thought.

“I don’t know.” I looked down and clenched the locket in my fist. “It doesn’t seem to have a purpose.”

“That seems strange, doesn’t it?” she agreed. “It seems almost as if only an error would cause this. Sort of like… being stuck in a loop of code.”

Horror crept into my stomach. “You think it was some sort of mistake?”

“I think that all creatures are fallible. And I find it likely that such an old simulation, with near infinite complexity, would contain any number of oversights.” She sighed and looked at the sky. “Is anyone really watching us here? Or do we exist outside of that, in an incidental simulation, unseen by whatever it is that created what we came from?”

She paused, but I had nothing to say. The pain of feeling foolish overwhelmed me.

“I can only hope that when the last of us dies, when we no longer exist in that ‘Real World’ anymore, the loop will close.”

“And we will all cease to be,” I said softly. “A final death for all of us.”

She nodded. “One can only hope.”

We sat there silently for a few moments.

“I should build a bench here,” I said softly, half-heartedly.

Eighty-year-old me stood, brushing off her knees. “I’ll find my way around. I’m sure I can find something to do,” she said, a bit wryly, and idled back the way we had come.

I sit here still, looking at the tomato plants. I don't know who, or what, wrote the code. They could know we're here, or they could not. It doesn't matter. I resent them either way.